Thoughts on film making:

[Come up with better Intro , so that tone is more interesting]

Departments:

• Casting
• Photography
• Sound & Music
• Logistics
• Sets
• Screenplay
• Story
• Choreography (Action and visual)

Casting:

Cast plays the main role in presenting the movie to the audience. Specifically in south indian film industry , it’s the cast that attract the audience the most. They are the front faces of the movie. The primary job of any artist is to bring liveness to the content written on the paper. Artist needs to have skill to portray a scene in different ways. Apart from the versatility, actor needs to have consistency, patience to portray a scene multiple times in the same exact manner since there is a chance of retakes due to uncontrollable parameters. Specifically in Indian film industry, actor initiates or gives a go ahead to a movie before anything could kick in. So actor has additional responsibility of judging due to the amount of stakes, reputation involved. More than director, it’s the actor that gets more time to spend with the character. A good actor will try to discover/invent common arc which aligns with the character and his capabilities as an actor. Now it’s the director’s job to make it tune to the palette of the movie. One more important quality of actor is being creative or spontaneous enough to react to the sudden changes from co-actors or location changes.

Photography:

Photography is one department which makes a movie viewable despite some non crucial / interesting things running on foreground. Ideally it shouldn’t be louder than cast unless visuals have specific context in story. Photography is one of the tools to set the mood of the scene very quickly. Movie making differs from writing novel or book since these have sufficient amount of time in setting up the scene. But in case of movie, we have very limited screen time. So photography should effective in capturing the mood of the scene. Generally previz of director is the initial input for the scene. There onwards DOp,director decide which fits the best for a scene. One of the important aspect of photography is the pace at which DOP could get the focus rightly and shifting across the cast or using multiple cameras. During filming, director needs to have an idea on how the output will end up post DI and vfx. i.e. should be aware of integrating all in an effective manner.

Sound:

Sound is the most underrated department despite the crucial factor played during a narrative. Sound , photography are 2 pillars which act like accelerator to get into the right mood with in a very less screen time. General structure of score consists of background ambience during initial phase of a scene to set the tone and finally some high notes to elevate to the intended level. There should be a smooth transition from ambience to the score. Unless there is a sudden change in narrative, it doesn’t make sense to use heavy score. Simply stating narrative should dictate the nature and intensity of score.

Given that we have 3 accelerators in the form of casting, photography and sound, narrative should be big enough to tolerate these things.

Choreography:

(Visual) Dance is nothing but visual poetry. It should be blended perfectly with background music, lyrics .Dance is an an extreme form of emotion. Unless narrative has those emotions, there is no special need to have songs which have dance (We cannot have songs just for the sake of having a count)